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Reading this entry in Nick Robinson's blog, I was slightly surprised by the comment "Of course, to anyone not approaching 40 the Cold War is a phrase that's almost meaningless except as history." So, an LJ poll. It's a little badly worded, but I hope the intent of the second question is clear given this context :-)

[Poll #1022949]

Mood::

curious

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There are 36 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

That's ridiculous. I'm 32 and I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War (http://marnanel.livejournal.com/45194.html).

I'm with you. I'm just about to turn (gulp!) 36 - but I don't feel this is 'approaching 40'. That'll be when I'm 38 or so ;)

I grew up with the Cold War, and I still remember just how far-reaching the effects of it were.

In some ways I contrast current political/inter-country climates with what I remember of back then, and it has marked differences. The current 'climate of terror' bears similarities but is also very dissimilar. The Cold War had more of a feel of being bounded by rules, by action and consequence, and to some extent you had a feel for the possible ramifications and what might happen. Terrorism is devoid of that 'playing by the rules, even if the rules aren't fair' feel. There are no rules, the terrorists have nothing to lose (except their own lives, and they see that as acceptable for the greater gain), whereas a nation has a lot more to lose (or win) and tends to act with greater consideration and forethought, in ways that will bring about what they want without being wholly isolated by the rest of the world.

I think it is interesting that some people react with 'gasp, but how COULD Russia behave like this' whereas to me it is more 'Russia is acting in a way that resembles the past, rather than the 'new Russia' that came about after the end of the cold war'.

There have been many changes in that region since the end of the cold war, some good, some not so good, and I am not surprised at the current turn of events.

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I'm 25 and I remember when the Cold War was on. I may have been a bit young to make much sense of any of it, but it was there.

At some point afterwards I realized that “communist” was not in fact inherently a dirty word.

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I was listening to the radio news this morning about the UK expelling Russian diplomats who are "believed to be intelligence agents" and wondering whether it was 1980.

The Cold War really doesn't inform any of my political thinking. I can remember my dad explaining the Warsaw Pact to me when I was about 8 and the Berlin Wall coming down but that's it. I personally feel very European in general, I don't feel much in common with the US compared to how I feel even somewhere like Russia or the Czech Republic, I think that is a bit shift from my parents' generation.

I tend to have big gaps in my knowledge of political history from about 1960-1988ish because that was too recent to be taught in school or for me to find interesting to read about in my spare time (I liked much earlier history) but too long ago for me to remember properly. (Cos I was born in 1980.)

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You didn't do anything about it at school? Odd - I'm a few years older than you and we did a big module on the cold war, U2/cuban missile crises and all for GCSE.

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I note I didn't do GCSE history, I don't know if

shreena did or not.

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How ridiculous! I'm 28 and I remember the 1980s bit of the Cold War most distinctly. Maybe Nick Robinson has no memories before the age of 10 or something, and assumes that no one else does either. But even then...

Would I still be a pacifist without the Cold War? Probably, given my upbringing. I wouldn't necessarily be quite so passionate about the need for global nuclear disarmament, and for leaders to have sufficient empathy to predict intelligently their enemies' likely reactions to things. Which few of them seemed to have then, and fewer now.

Other than Osama Bin Laden, if he counts as a leader. Given that I'm fairly certain he predicted Bush's likely reaction to 9/11 with extreme accuracy, and intended to achieve precisely that response.

Maybe it depends on how political your parents were. I didn't start getting really interested in politics and news till I was 11 or so - which was 1991 - and I don't think many kids under that age actively seek out political news, particularly international news/foreign policy. But, if your parents are interested in that kind of thing, they will talk about it and you will ask questions. Had my father not talked to me about the Cold War, I think I would have even fewer memories of it than I do already.

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*nods* Yes, I think you're right.

My parents are very political, and my brother and sister and I were brought up such. It did often feel like we were the only anti-war, left-wing family in the whole of Hitchin! (Although of course we weren't.)

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We were the only anti-war, left-wing family in the whole of Hitchin!

I think there's a song here that's asking to be written.. !

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You're from Hitchin too and you share a ton of friends with me? why haven't we ever run into one another somewhere?

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Eeee! I don't know. :-)

Which school did you go to? I went to Priory, from '89 to '96.

Also intrigued that you went to the University of Hertfordshire, especially in that particular department. I don't suppose you ever met Mr A.J. Compton while there did you...?

Might have to friend you, if that's okay.

Oh, and I used to live just down the road from the Angel's Reply (in Lancaster Avenue). Never went there though, at least as far as I remember.

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Given that I'm fairly certain he predicted Bush's likely reaction to 9/11 with extreme accuracy, and intended to achieve precisely that response.

If you mean George Bush personally then I don't think the dates support that interpretation; apparently Bin Laden approved the attacks in early 1999, and Bush was only elected in November 2000.

I'm not sure that OBL's motives fit either: as I understand it his primary goal at the time was US troops out of Saudi Arabia, whereas what actually happened was invasions of additional majority-Muslim countries. (Granted the US is having a lot of trouble in Iraq and he's probably experiencing considerable schadenfreude as a result.)

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Although most US troops have been withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.

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Indeed, and there's a certain irony in that...

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I'm 29, and although the Cold War was going on while I was young, it didn't really affect me in any way I could tell you. I'd say the Cold War definitely does have meaning, but only as history. Now of course we should learn from history, so that doesn't make it irrelevant; but it certainly feels pretty historical to me.

(I speak as someone who's unfortunately generally fairly ignorant about many political things, and was much more so until a few years ago.)

I studied the Cold War in GCSE history, and i also remember the Gorbachev bits of the gradual thaw. It doesn't particularly inform my political thinking, but I am aware of it as a period which has its ramifications still. I'm 26.

I'm 28, and I studied the Cold War in politics, not as history but as something still alive and killing people. That would be degree level, so about 10 years ago.

I'm nearly thirty now; I don't think I really started paying much attention to politics until the early nineties (when I was 14 or so). By that time the Berlin Wall had already fallen and the Soviet Union disintegrated. So for me it is history -- a set of past events which strongly shaped the background of the social and political landscape but no longer an active force. I think I'd put Thatcher's government in the same category -- I do remember Thatcher going, but the strong negative feelings some people still have about her seem kind of alien to me; I never personally experienced any of the unemployment or social problems of the early eighties, and the whole weak unions/privatisation/market forces position introduced by Thatcher and carried on by Blair has a certain 'natural order of things' feel to it. Hating Thatcher would be like hating Neville Chamberlain...

Yeah. I was 15 when the Berlin wall came down, and for years before then there had been mutterings about perestroika. By the time I was old enough to worry about the state of the world, things were looking up. There wasn't the sense of impending doom, being pitted against an implacable enemy, that I associate with the cold war proper.

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I suspect that Nick Robinson is thinking of the 1960s Cold War rather than the 1980s Cold War which was fairly different in character and followed a period of déntente. More John le Carré than Tom Clancy.

But someone who in only "approaching 40" now wouldn't remember anything of the 1960s Cold War - or even the early 70s Cold War.

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I'm just old :-(

I'm 28, and I remember the events of the end of the Cold War (1989-1990) quite clearly - in particular the Russian coup, and to a lesser extent the collapse of emigration restrictions from Eastern Europe leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It does inform my political thinking now, but mainly only in terms of being aware of the historical context to much of the state of the world now, rather than it being directly relevant.

I studied a lot of the Cold War during history lessons and although apparently Mum and I watched the Berlin Wall coming down on the TV when I was small I have no recollection of it whatsoever; hence for me it is mostly history.

Yes, it's all a bit silly to assume we have no idea about this sort of thing. Heavens, for those of us who take GCSE History, I believe the Cuban Missile Crisis is still a coursework option, never mind general historical knowledge.

I took the phrase "a phrase that's almost meaningless except as history" to mean 'a phrase that indicates a specific historical conflict, now ended', as opposed to 'a phrase that indicates a certain type of conflict, such as the one in the later 20th century which gave rise to the phrase'.

Neither meaning, to my mind, necissarily suggests anything about whether the definer remembers, or not, the late 20th century cold war, or whether they are aware, or not, of the continuing influences of that war. It's just about a phrase. Perhaps, however, the more historically aware are less likely to believe that 'cold war' is a type of war, more likely to believe it is a single phonomenon.

Does the _idea_ that wars can have different 'temperatures' influence political thinking - yes, to the extent that I think of conflicts 'heating up' and 'cooling down' - but I'm not sure that this is related to the idea of a 'cold war'. Whether the late 20th century conflict still colours political thininking is a much more interesting question.

I grew up with the Cold War and arguably near the front line, as Italy historically always hovered on the verge of Communism and according to some interpretations was embroiled in low-level civil war between black and red terrorists from the end of WW2 to the late '80s. The Cold War was very real in the playground, with rumours that the Russians were coming, overheard news of kidnappings, assassinations, bodies in the boots of cars, hoax bomb threats to schools and parental warnings on how to behave in case of loud bangs. Films like The Day After or the video to Ultravox's Dancing with Tears in my Eyes scared the living crap out of me and I used to lie awake at night worrying about nuclear war. Nothing ever happened to me or anyone I knew, but it was a constant low-grade hum in the background. Then one day it was over, perestroika and glasnost and all that, and after a couple of years of regret that I never visited Berlin before the Wall came down, I thought I'd forgotten all about it. Films like Defence of the Realm started to feel incredibly dated.

Then 9/11 happened, and it was back to the low-grade background hum.

I'm 38, and grew up in a town quite near the border between the two German Republics with a mother who worked for the British Army, so the Cold War was one of my formative influences. One of the disconnects between me and

orangebird, who is 14, is that the Cold War means very little to him. I think he started to Get It when a housemate and I showed him Dr Strangelove and explained how close to our childhood reality it really was.

I'm glad to see that most of your readers still think the phrase has more than historical meaning, because without an understanding of the Cold War, I think our dealings with contemporary Russia will be as doomed as the War on Terror seems to be by lack of an understanding of the roots of the Middle Eastern conflict. If either seem like "history" to our younger compatriots, I suspect that is only possible because our countries have been amongst the victors - thus far.

I suppose the fact I've been going to peace marches since I was still in a pushchair (ie late 70s) might have a bearing on how significant the cold war is to me.

I'm 35 and it's certainly not just history to me. That may have been influenced by my Dad's job - he was a Russian linguist working for the government in ways that are almost certainly still covered by the official secrets act.

I can remember the nuclear disarmament leaflets that came round when I was in my early teens, pointing out that my home town would be a major target in case of nuclear war. This probably didn't get the response they were expecting - I can remember thinking that this was a good thing, because from what I knew of nuclear wars, I felt I'd be better off not surviving one.

Child of the nineties: my political awareness - on anything other than a local scale - began with September 11th.

My History GCSE didn't contain anything on Russia, something that my teacher complained about bitterly throughout the course; he put on extra classes for those of us who were interested.

Again a 28 year old who remembers parts of the Cold War and its end. I could live with approaching 30 (just about) but certainly not 40!

Some of us took an active part in it, because the idea of hot & cold wars where temperature describes the level of conflict gives people a false idea of what was going on. In the Cold War I served at times on the duty that meant you couldn't go on weekend or any leave if you'd be more than 4 hours, as in get the ship ready for sea, travelling time away. Including putting to sea in a hurry once to shadow a ship all the way down the North Sea and out to the Western Approaches, all the while each ship kept to a minimum safe use of radar and radio and having various bods filming and photographing the other.

October